Q. I am in the process of selling my apartment and we seem to have hit a brick wall. My solicitor tells me that we are waiting for some Section 20 Planning applications to come in from the managing agents. I am about to complete on a new build that I am buying and feel extremely anxious that I am not going to get this exchanged and completed on time, is there anything I can do to speed things up?
A. Selling a property or for that matter buying a property can for sure be one of the most stressful things you will likely encounter in your life. For some its smooth sailing from the beginning to the end but for others it can be another story altogether. Given that you are selling a leasehold property this will always add an extra burden to the amount of paperwork that will need to be executed by your respective solicitors. Your solicitor will likely have received numerous enquiries and requests for copies of planning and the like besides the usual basic enquiries expected to complete the sale of a property. Sadly Managing Agents can let sellers down with respect to supplying paperwork speedily enough. Most of the managing agents enquiries are usually supplied in the initial pack that your solicitor would have requested at the very onset of the sale which should by now be with the buyers solicitors. When the buyers solicitor requires other documents not in the pack this can severely slow things down as once again you are relying on a third party to supply much needed documents to move the transaction forward. To help speed things a long a little you can also give your solicitor a hand by contacting the managing agents yourself. Given you pay your service charges directly to the managing agent you are perfectly within your rights to also reach out to them yourself and explain that your sale is in jeopardy without the much needed requested documents. If you are able to source a contact at the managing agents and explain your predicament they are usually more than helpful and will assist you as best as they can. As you may imagine they are inundated daily by solicitors requesting documentation but by speaking to them yourself you can usually bring your file to the top of the pile and retrieve the much needed documentation to get things moving again.